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Advice to a Desolate France

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Advice to a Desolate France Journal of Markets & Morality Volume 19, Number 1 (Spring 2016): 155–218 Copyright © 2016 Advice to a Desolate France Sebastian Castellio Advice to a Translated by Wouter Valkhoff Desolate France Introduction by Marius F. Valkhoff 155 Advice to a Desolate France Contents Preface iii Title Page v Introduction to the French Edition vii Advice to a Desolate France 1 i 157 Advice to a Desolate France Preface* Such was the legacy of intolerance and intransigence left by the Religious Wars that for the succeeding almost four hundred years, neither Catholic nor Protestant scholars had the time or the ear for the few voices of moderation from those distant stormy times. Moreover, those prophetic messages of moderation and tolerance could only become audible in our ecumenical atmosphere, and this last only became appar- ent, amongst Protestants and Catholics alike, since the last World War. At the time and in the heat of the struggle, both Catholics and Calvinists rejected advocates of tolerance as harmful to their respective holy causes. They persecuted them as liberalists and burnt their books as heretical. They did this last with such application that very few copies of these pleas were left. It is to the honour of Buisson, Giran, Lecler, Bainton, Becker, Delormeau, and now Valkhoff that by diligent research they retrieved these works and revived the memory of their heroic authors. Valkhoff’s fully documented and annotated edition of Castellio’s Advice to a Desolate France, not only contributes materially to the historical knowledge of that forgotten but meaningful side of the Religious Wars, but also makes it easily accessible to the English reader. * This is a republication with permission of Sebastian Castellio, Advice to a Desolate France, trans. Wouter Valkhoff (Shepherdstown, WV: Patmos Press, 1975), with an introduction and explanatory notes by Marius F. Valkhoff. This treatise originally appeared as Sebastian Castellio, Conseil à la France désolée (1562). iii 159 Scholia iv Preface Rejected by their contemporaries and buried by subsequent generations, men like Castellio have meaningful advice even for our twentieth century. His work and that of Pasquier need to be republished exactly now, for reasons as valid now as in their times. Doctrinal intolerance, in their day, had claimed hundred thousands of lives; ideological intolerance, its blood brother in more senses than one, in our day claimed the lives of millions, and is still savaging many in most countries. Ideological intolerance, whether racial, national or social, reveals all the symptoms of religious doctrinalism. It demands absolute conformity, it forces and violates the consciences of dissidents, slanders them, brands them as heretics and traitors and liberalists, hounds them and kills them. Castellio’s arguments against this lethal mass madness are as valid today as four centuries ago. He based them on Scripture, common sense, common law, and natural law. He addresses them to priests, pastors, politicians, princes and the common people. He reminds them of the demonstrable truth that “tyranny engenders sedition,” that a forced and violated conscience turns to hatred, and that the “remedial” suppression of freedom of speech and thought kills, but never cures. He reminds them of the example of prophets and Apostles who persuaded by truth, but never forced, and of Christ who came not to destroy, but to save, and who taught the immutably true: Do unto others, what you want them to do unto you. Valkhoff’s clarifying notes both to the text and the historical circumstances which produced it, enhance the value of this little jewel of sublime argument for the scholar as well as for the man in search of direction in our world of pro- paganda and ideological intolerance. —Albert Geyser 160 Advice to a Desolate France Advice to a Desolate France Sebastian Castellio In the course of which the reason for the present war is outlined, as well as the possible remedy and, in the main, advice given as to whether consciences should be forced. The year 1562 v 161 Advice to a Desolate France Marius F. Valkhoff Introduction to the French Edition At the end of the year 1562, when France was in the midst of a religious war, a small book of 96 pages in 12° was published anonymously, without any indi- cation of the place where it was published. Its title was Advice to a Desolate France, but its sub-title gives an eloquent summary of the contents. As early as 1563 some copies had reached the Calvinist Republic of Geneva, where the farrier, Michel Chatillon, interrogated by the Consistory, confessed that they had been sent to him from Basle, by his cousin, the printer Ph. Chapuis. The matter concerned a copy for himself and another meant for his uncle, Mathieu Eyssautier, a heterodox priest, who had been banished from the city. The treatise had been written by Michel’s uncle, Sebastian Castellio, professor of Greek at the university of Basle, the very man who is considered by our contemporaries as the great precursor of liberal Protestantism. The members of the Church Council judged it “full of error,” reprimanded the importers, and ordered the destruction of the available copies.1 1 See Ferdinand Buisson, Sébastien Castellion. Sa vie et son oeuvre (1515–1563), Etudes sur les origines du Protestantisme libéral français, Paris, 1892, vol. 11, pp. 225ff. vii 163 Scholia viii Introduction to the French Edition It is therefore not surprising that only very few copies of this little masterpiece have survived until our time; we only know of four.2 Although Castellio’s two biographers, Ferdinand Buisson3 and Etienne Giran4 have published large extracts of the Advice, the preparation of a complete edition, more than four centuries after its first publication, is by no means a superfluous endeavour. In this edition we have, as far as possible, preserved the language and spelling of the period, not wishing to modernise the original text. Only, as we wished this work to be read, we have corrected printer’s errors, added accents, normalised the punctuation and explained certain archaic words and expressions in footnotes. Our edition, therefore, presents Castellio’s own text, rendered, we hope, somewhat more accessible to the non-specialised reader. The beginning of the 1560s was decisive for the political and religious history of a France torn by the struggles between Protestants and Catholics. After the death of Henri II (in 1559), we witness a change of opinion: instead of persecut- ing the “heretics,” the government first inclines towards a policy of conciliation and later on manifests a certain measure of tolerance. As early as the reign of Catherine de Medici, influenced by her chancellor, Michel de L’Hospital, we witness the beginnings of these new tendencies. Castellio himself, in his book, mentions three important events, which took place shortly before its publication: the Conspiracy of Amboise, the January Edict and the Massacre of Wassy. These are well-known historical events, and we shall therefore describe them but briefly. What interests us in this instance is the atmosphere in which they took place and also the Advice, which they inspired to a large extent. In the Conspiracy of Amboise, one must see a reaction against the religious persecutions of the reign of Henri II. Certain Protestant gentlemen and their co-religionists tried to bring the new king, the young François II, under their influence, in order to impose their ideas on him and to prevent the return of the 2 Namely at the Library of the British Museum, at the National Library and the Library of the Society of the History of French Protestantism, in Paris, and in the Public and University Library at Geneva. 3 Buisson, op. cit. 4 Etienne Giran, Sébastien Castellion et la Réforme Calviniste: Les deux Réformes, Haarlem, Paris, 1914. 164 Advice to a Desolate France Marius F. Valkhoff ix cruelties of the preceding reign (under the influence of the Guises). The undertak- ing failed lamentably and the many conspirators were virtually all massacred. At the end of his long life, the poet Agrippa d’Aubigné would still remember how, when a young boy, his father showed him the flower of Protestant youth betrayed and hung ignobly from the balconies of the castle of Amboise by the Catholic government. The January Edict (1562), in authorising Protestant religious services outside the cities, and condoning family worship, was like a balm on the recent wounds. But it neither satisfied the fanatics of the one, nor of the other movement. For the Catholics the concessions were too far-reaching, whereas the Protestants found them ineffective and insufficient. Nevertheless, in the climate of the time, the January Edict represented a first manifestation of tolerance, and as such consti- tuted a great step forward. Meanwhile both parties were consolidating their respective positions, whilst arming themselves to the teeth. It was therefore but a question of time before a spark would set off the explosion. This indeed happened very soon: on the 1st of March, 1562, the duke François de Guise, accompanied by an armed escort, passed through the small town of Wassy in Champagne. They discovered a Protestant assembly listening to their preacher’s sermon in a barn. The soldiers of the duke started to insult the Protestants, and finally opened fire. A general battle ensued, and in this way some sixty men and women were killed and a further hundred injured. Even at that time, the matter could have been peacefully settled and Théodore de Bèze, Calvin’s right hand man at Geneva, in fact suggested this. But Condé and the other leaders, Protestant as well as Catholic, pressed for war. Soon they were swept along by their own supporters, and hostilities broke out spontaneously in various parts of France.
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